Defensive armament

Usage in the battles

The main use of this plane is precision strikes on hard targets such as tanks and pillboxes, as well as providing ground support in ground battles. This is largely due to its spectacular dive-bombing accuracy and powerful payload. To preform an effective dive with this plane, at an altitude of at least 1400 m, place your target at the bend in your wings, roll your upside-down and dive at an angle of 60-90 degrees, aiming your crosshairs at or slightly in front of the target (leading with their speed). Drop throttle to 0% and deploy airbrakes (h key by default); you should keep a steady speed of 400 km/h. During the dive, a siren activates at about < 2500 m, this is for aesthetic purposes and can hurt or help in different ways. Release your bomb at 300 m from the target and you should score a direct, or near direct hit.

The Mg 17 allow for strafing runs on soft ground targets, while the bomb payload is sufficient for a heavy pillbox and a destroyer. The radio operators defensive Mg 15 is merely to scare away enemy fighters and is not a sufficient weapon for self-defense. The Stukas maneuverability however is!

Tactics

Arcade Battle:
In AB you should concentrate on killing tanks and pillboxes first (if any) with your bombs, and use your offensive machine guns to kill soft targets like armored cars, artillery, howitzers and AA. In this mode you wont need your air brakes since you can't break your wings and its easy to pull up from a fast dive attack, and its recommended that you keep as much of your speed up from the dives so your are harder to intercept by enemy aircraft.

Realistic Battle:
In RB, you should keep your altitude, and look for tank columns to attack. Once you've chosen which tank column you wish to attack(I recommend some ground targets as far from the battle field or enemy airfield as possible, so you are less likely to be intercepted) . Once you are right over your intended target, set your throttle to 0% and point your nose at the at the tank you want to destroy (since you have no bomb sight, there will not be a bomb-drop indicator like in Arcade, and you will have to guess where the bombs will drop) once you are nearing your target, you will have to deploy your air-brakes or you wont be able to pull up at high speeds. (you can tell when you are reaching a high speed with the sounds that the air and wings make) Once you drop your bomb(s) point your nose up to pull up. At this point you may or may not have killed your intended target, but it is OK if you did not, you will get better at it with more practice, but you still have your offensive armament to kill soft targets like AA or you can engage enemy fighters that are near by(which is very likely).

Dog fighting the RB with Ju87 is a very difficult task if the enemy knows your advantages and disadvantages and uses them to his advantage. I recommend that you avoid doing head-on attacks a much as possible, for you do not have the armament to risk it. Also recommended is that you stay low and slow in a combat situation with enemy aircraft (because bad control ability at high speeds) and try to get the enemy to engage in a turn-fight. If he falls for your turn fight, you should end up on his 6 o'clock in 3-5 turns on most enemies, it really depends on if its a British, American or Russian plane, British being generally the better turn fighter. If he does not fall for your turn-fight, you are most likely going to go down...this plane is not a fighter plane.

The Ju-87 B-2 is very useful in tank RB (where with combined arms tanks and planes fight together) as just two of the 50 kg bombs can disable/destroy a tank if the land on target. As one of the bomb presets carries 4 x 50 kg bombs and 1 x 250 kg bomb this is probably the best use for the Stuka in its current BR (1.7) where heavy amour is not necessarily met regularly.

Other Notes:
When returning to base landing and takeoff is simple, and use of the airbrakes will help if you came in to fast to land. But you may be coming back on a dead or damaged engine (The Ju 87's engine is prone to damage and over heat) and it would help a lot if you find the nearest friendly airfield and get there as soon as possible.

Because of their low speed, permanent landing gear and reasonable durability, all the Ju 87 are quite good for capturing airfields in the Airfield Domination mode.

Manual Engine Control

MEC elements

Mixer

Pitch

Radiator

Supercharger

Turbocharger

Oil

Water

Type

Controllable

Not controllable

Not controllable

Not controllable

Separate

Not ontrollable

Not controllable

Modules

Tier

Flight performance

Survivability

Weaponry

I

II

III

IV

Pros and cons

Pros:

High bombing accuracy

Easy to land

Very useful as air support for ground forces battles

Access to dive brakes

Air frame can withstand some degree of damage

Very high ammo count for strafing ground targets

High ROF for rear gunner, and is well protected

Rear gunner is sometimes adequate to scare off some enemy fighters

Features a lot of cool useful camouflages and all is available through destroying ground targets

Can reliably engage enemy bombers when played on a tank battle

Cons:

Poor climb rate

Large radiator in front and is easily damaged

Cockpit is unarmored from the front

Defenseless against enemy fighters

Slow

Light bomb load

Very light defensive armament.

Siren increases drag

Siren that activates in dives is very loud and can divert their attention over to you, especially enemy SPAA and fighters

Siren can distract you if you're not used to it

An animated bomb trapeze delays the bomb drop from pressing space (or whatever key is bound), which can make bombing runs harder (especially if used to other bombers)

History

Describe the history of the creation and combat usage of the aircraft in more detail than in the introduction. If the historical reference turns out to be too big, take it to a separate article, taking a link to an article about the vehicle and adding a block "/ historical reference" (example: https://wiki.warthunder.com/Name-vehicles/historical reference) and add a link to it here using the main template. Be sure to include links to sources at the end of the article.

Media

An excellent addition to the article will be video guides, as well as screenshots from the game and photos.

Read also

Links to the articles on the War Thunder Wiki that you think will be useful for the reader, for example,